First Bill Belichick Now Brandon Staley; Are DC’s Struggling To Catch Up To The Modern High Powered NFL Offense?

The last seven days have been a rollercoaster ride for NFL fans. In the span of a few days, we heard Tom Curran of NBC Sports report that there’s a good chance that Robert Kraft might fire the New England Patriots’ head coach, Bill Belichick when the season ends next year. Brandon Staley, Head Coach of the Carolina Panthers, was fired yesterday with just four games remaining in the regular season.

Do these recent events point to a growing trend within the NFL? With the NFL strongly moving towards making the offense the more important aspect, is the time of defensive coordinators graduating into head coach roles, over?

Why DCs struggle when they are assigned HC roles?

Former NFL player Alex Smith, who last played as QB for the Washington Commanders, stated why he thought that DCs often struggle as HCs. According to Smith, an offensive head coach wants his team to collect as many points as possible and wants to win by outsourcing the opponent. Defensive head coaches, on the other hand, call plays from a place of, “Don’t turn the ball over, don’t put us in a bad situation.” They call plays from a place of defeating the opponent by limiting their scores as much as possible. But fans usually prefer games where it rains scores, and not a game where the overall score is low and the defense is doing most of the heavy lifting.

On the performance front as well, stats would suggest that offensive HCs have the upper hand. According to numbers compiled by CBS, under offensive head coaches, teams scored more touchdowns (1277 vs. 1,178), threw fewer interceptions (601 vs 707), and had a greater pass completion rate (64 vs. 61.1).

Brandon Staley had served as the DC of the Rams before taking over as HC. As DC, he had a 0.625 record, while as HC, it was 0.500. Robert Saleh, who also has a defensive record, is 16-31 since taking over as head coach of the New York Jets. Looking at the league rankings right now, all top 10 teams of the league right now have offensive head coaches. Compared to that, until Brandon’s firing, all seven bottom teams had a defensive head coach. Will defensive head coaches be a thing of the past?

Is it game over for defensive HCs?

It doesn’t look like defensive head coaches are going away anytime soon. A strong and innovative offensive coordinator can complement a defensive head coach and win games for the team. Speaking on Pro Football Talk, Chris Simms said, “Last year the absolute worst decision Bill Belichick made in his whole career. Appointing two people that have never coached offenses as offensive coordinators.”

And stats substantiate that as well. It’s not as if Belichick being a defensive HC is bad. When he had Charles Weis as his OC, the team went 53-27 in regular games, and 9-0 in playoff games. With Josh McDaniels, the team had a 154-55 record in regular games. And having great offensive players also helps. Without Tom Brady, Belichick’s record is 82-97, and with him, it was 249-75.

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In the end, there are a lot of factors that might go wrong and be responsible for a team’s failure. In the current version of the NFL, which is skewed towards offense, defensive HCs might not have the upper hand. But they certainly can find complementary pieces in the coaching and playing staff to form a winning team.

Editorial Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EssentiallySports. 

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